Come hear from Lamin Sanneh, the D. Williams James Professor of World Christianity at Yale University. Professor Sanneh will be visiting Redeemer to share his moving and thought-provoking story which he recently wrote in his 2012 autobiography, Summoned from the Margin. Join us in listening to his riveting story of conversion from Islam to Christianity.
Sunday, June 12th
10:10 - 10:50 AM
In the Morgan Chapel at Temple Bat Yahm
1011 Camelback Street, Newport Beach, CA 92660

Summoned from the Margin

This book is the story of Lamin Sanneh's fascinating journey from his upbringing in an impoverished village in West Africa to education in the United States and Europe to a distinguished career teaching at the Universities of Yale, Harvard, Aberdeen, and Ghana.

He grew up in a polygamous household in The Gambia and attended a government-run Muslim boarding school. A chance encounter with Helen Keller's autobiography taught him that education and faith are the key to overcoming physical and personal hardship and inspired his journey. Burning theological questions about God's nature and human suffering eventually led Sanneh to convert from Islam to Christianity and to pursue a career in academia. Here he recounts the unusually varied life experiences that have made him who he is today.

About Lamin Sanneh

Born in The Gambia and descended from an ancient African royal family, and a naturalized U.S. citizen, Lamin Sanneh was educated on four continents. He earned degrees in history and Islamic studies and has taught in several Universities, including the University of Ghana, Legon, the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and Harvard, before coming to Yale in 1989 as the D. Willis James Professor of World Christianity and of History.

Professor Sennah has received numerous honors and academic distinctions. He is a life member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, and an Honorary Research Professor at the School of Oriental & African Studies in the University of London. He is a recipient of honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh and Liverpool Hope University. He has been twice chair of Yale’s Council on African Studies. He has served as consultant to the Pew Charitable Trusts; was an official consultant at the 1998 Lambeth Conference in London; and was a founding member of the Council of 100 Leaders of the World Economic Forum. He was the recipient of the John W. Kluge Chair in the Countries and Cultures of the South at the Library of Congress. For his academic work, Professor Sanneh was made Commandeur de l’Ordre National du Lion, Senegal’s highest national honor. Professor Sanneh is a fellow of Trumbull College at Yale. He was appointed by John Paul II to serve on the Pontifical Commission of the Historical Sciences at the Vatican and by Pope Benedict XVI to the Pontifical Commission on Religious Relations with Muslims.

He is the author of over two hundred articles in scholarly journals and of more than a dozen books on Islam and Christianity, including his memoir, Summoned from the Margin: Homecoming of an African (Eerdmans, 2012) and his forthcoming book entitled, Beyond Jihad: The Pacifist Tradition in West African Islam (Oxford University Press, Summer, 2016). He is series editor of the multi-volume Oxford Studies in World Christianity in which three volumes have appeared, with six more underway. He is co-editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to World Christianity (forthcoming in June, 2016). Additionally, he is an editor-at-large of the ecumenical weekly The Christian Century, a contributing editor of the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, and he serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals and encyclopedias.